Tuesday, November 22, 2011

This was a 2010 film that aired in the UK in 2011 and was made for Nickelodeon. As such it was a kid’s flick and relied on the famous ‘the boy who cried wolf’ storyline (though in this case, even if he had never cried werewolf (or more accurately monster) I doubt he’d have been listened to, but never mind).

Victoria Justice as Jordan

It starts off with Jordan (Victoria Justice) struggling into her house (which is for sale) with her bags of groceries. The lights in the house are out and, grabbing a torch, she heads down to the breakers. Once there she is accosted by her little brother Hunter (Chase Ellison) in a monster mask. He takes her photo as she screams – it is a typical Hunter prank. Jordan has invited neighbour Ms Carlsberg (Anna Galvin, Blood Ties) to dinner as an attempt to get her dad, David (Matt Winston), dating again. A further prank from Hunter puts paid to that.

brooke shields as Madame Varcolac

So, we have Jordan the ugly duckling (as it were) trying to act as woman of the household, Dad struggling to make ends meet and Hunter missing his mother more than he perhaps says. Then they get a document and letter left with them to tell them that Uncle Dragomir (who they had not heard of), over in Wolfsberg, Romania, has died and they are set to inherit his estate, including his castle – so it is off to Romania and into the care of housekeeper Madame Varcolac (Brooke Shields).

Jordan's eyes change

Jordan meets a boy – Goran (Steven Grayhm) – the only trouble is that he is a butcher and she is a vegetarian. David meets realtor Paulina (Brooke D'Orsay), who is saccharine sweet and looking to get him to sell the castle. When the internet router goes down Hunter and Jordan find a secret lab and, due to some messing around by hunter, a vial of blood is smashed and Jordan steps on the broken glass. The blood is from a lycanthrope and Jordan is infected.

the wolf

Hunter searches for a cure and Jordan starts eating meat, loses her allergies and becomes athletic and sassy. He discovers that she has to be cured before the end of the first full moon or she will be stuck as a werewolf forever. They find an ally in Madame Varcolac, who tells them that, as well as a scientist and the inventor of karaoke, Dragomir was a werewolf.

Paulina Vamps

They also discover that Paulina is a vampire and is trying to get the castle for herself. A thousand years before the vampires had tried to take over the world but Dragomir had defeated them with an army of werewolves – the battle taking place on the site where the castle was built. Paulina wants to take the castle and then the world. Will Hunter get his dad to believe him?

caught in the sun

In this the vampires are definitely evil and the werewolves good (and Britney Spears is a werewolf too). However the vampires are also drawn in quite a bungling, comic way. We discover little about them. There is a suggestion of garlic allergy and we see that they burn up in sunlight. Of course Varcolac is a variant name for a Romanian revenant but Madame Varcolac is not one of these.

The film was okay, from an adult perspective, it was fun to see Brooke Shields in her stern Romanian governess role but it was all way too predictable. However I am sure that the target audience will get a kick out of it. Unusually the werewolf effects were quite well done. We could have done with more vampires though. The score takes into account the target audience, 5 out of 10.

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